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The Kobo Clara 2E ereader drops to a record-low price for Black Friday

You can pick up our top recommendation for only $120.

Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget

Amazon’s Black Friday deals have dropped the Kobo Clara 2E ereader to a record-low price. This model is Engadget’s top pick for the best ereader in 2023, with its terrific design, intuitive navigation and seamless library book borrowing. Typically $140, the Clara 2E is only $120 right now on Amazon and Kobo.

After spending countless hours trying eight models from five different brands, Engadget chose the Kobo Clara 2E as the top ereader for most people. Despite being pricier than the baseline Kindles, Engadget’s Amy Skorheim loved the Kobo’s intuitive design, IPX8 water resistance (it can handle submersion in two meters of water for 60 minutes), warm light and lack of ads.

The device has a 6-inch touchscreen with “ComfortLight Pro,” Kobo’s branding for adjustable brightness and warmth. It has 16GB of storage, enough for around 12,000 ebooks, and its battery life lasts for “weeks.” It has a pleasant onboarding experience, walking you through account setup and asking about your favorite books to help improve its algorithmic recommendations. It even nudges you toward its library lending feature (through Overdrive integration), a rare example of a company notifying you of free alternatives to its digital wares. We found the borrowing process to be seamless.

Most importantly, the Kobo Clara 2E provides a top-notch reading experience. The device is light (only six ounces) and has a textured back that makes longer reading sessions more comfortable. We found the quality of its front light to make it the most paper-like of any ereader we tried, and adjusting brightness is as easy as swiping your finger down the screen’s left edge. It was also the most responsive to touch of any ereader we tested. It even has a quick wake-up feature that, after pushing its button, immediately jumps to the page you were last reading without any swiping past ads or extra taps.

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.